text: Vincent Marks was born on 10 June 1930, in Harlesden, North West London, to Lewis and Rose (née Goldbaum) Marks, in a Jewish household. His parents ran a pub. Marks attended Tottenham Grammar School before going to study medicine on a scholarship at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1948. He completed his training and qualified as a doctor from the St Thomas' Hospital in London, in 1954. 
  It is noted that his interest in medicine was driven in part by his mothers insistence that their childhood home be neat and tidy for the "doctors visit", leading him and his brother to think highly of doctors and medicine as a profession. During his time at Oxford, he was branded a communist after demanding that the The Daily Worker, a newspaper mouthpiece of Communist Party of Great Britain, be introduced in the university's common rooms. He later joined the party, but left it in 1956 to join the Social Democratic Party.